Read File line by line with Shell Script (bash)

March 28, 2007

I realize this is a very basic issue, but when searching online I found a dearth of information regarding reading a text file line by line using a shell script. So below I have included the basic code you need.

#!/bin/bash
#### skeleton code for reading a file line by line
## fill variable "thefile" with the name and path of the file you want to read line by line
thefile=/home/var/nameoffileyouwanttoprocess
## the loop below pipes the output of the file into a variable ($line) line by line
cat $thefile | while read line
do
echo $line #placeholder command to make sure everything is groovy
done

[…] a Perl-based tool called split-logfile. My savage ignorance of Perl led me to look at bash in “Read File line by line with Shell Script”—which turned out to be hopeless slow for large Web logs. So some person named “hans” at […]